Page 34 of The Devils

Bit by a Monk

‘This way,’ said Vigga, striding on through the dunes, enjoying how the sandy grass and grassy sand felt ’twixt her toes. She’d always been happiest by the water. Beaches and coves and harbours and wharves. That crinkly ribbon of the world where land and sea meet, and fight, and fuck, and grind each other into new shapes like ill-matched lovers in an endless stormy romance neither can ever escape.

The thought of that style of romance set off a bit of a tickle, in fact.

She vaguely remembered being upset about something but it hardly seemed worth groping around in all the horrible mess in her memory just so she could feel upset about it again. Whenever she went looking for something in her head, she never came out with anything she wanted. Like diving for oysters in a fucking midden. Better to let it go.

‘Like nutshells,’ she muttered.

‘Nutshells?’ asked Brother Diaz.

Vigga grinned sideways. ‘Exactly!’ He’d a fine, long stride when he actually used all his legs, and didn’t weigh himself down with his prayers and his doubts and his saints and whatever. ‘Who’d have thought, when we first met at that inn, we’d end up getting such an understanding?’

Brother Diaz puffed out his cheeks. ‘Life brims over with surprises.’

‘You look different,’ she said. ‘Out o’ your monk sack.’

‘It’s called a habit.’

‘Then it’s a bad habit. Ha! Bad habit, ’cause, you see—’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I see.’

‘You’re not laughing.’

‘There aren’t many jokes about the life of a monk that a monk won’t have heard a thousand times.’ He gave a rather wistful sigh. ‘In the monastery, there’s plenty of time to think of them.’

‘Well, whatever you call it, you look different out of it,’ said Vigga. ‘More …’ She dug for the word but got distracted by the way his damp shirt kept sticking and unsticking to his side with each step. She could see the shape of his ribs through it, then they were gone, then they were back, then gone, like they were winking. Good ribs, they were, gone, back—

She realised he was watching her. ‘More what?’

‘Exactly! It’s like they put you in sacks to make you look bad.’

‘I imagine that’s precisely why they do it. It’s been a while … since I wore anything but the sack. I never even wanted to be a monk.’

‘Who’d have thought, when we first met at that inn, we’d have so much in common,’ said Vigga. ‘I never even wanted to be a werewolf.’

‘How did it happen?’

‘Usual way. Bit by a werewolf.’ And she undid the top couple of buttons on her shirt, which honestly were more or less undoing themselves, so she could peel it back to show him her shoulder, and the mottled ring of scars with the rings of runes around it. ‘Still aches, sometimes. When the moon’s full.’

‘It’s true, then?’ asked Brother Diaz, peering over. She might’ve been imagining it, but she could’ve sworn his eyes strayed away from the bite a bit. ‘What they say about werewolves and the moon?’

Vigga stopped, closing her eyes. Just the word. Moooooooooon. She saw it on the inside of her lids, at its roundest and most swollen, hanging in the black with its soft and sultry silvery glow like a great ripe fruit in the sky, ready to burst with the sweetest juice, and she made a little noise, not quite a howl but a sort of whimpery coo, and shivered all the way from her hair to her tippy-toes. ‘Oh, it’s true,’ she whispered.

‘Right,’ said Brother Diaz, and cleared his throat.

‘And you?’ she asked, setting off again, doing up the hard-pressed buttons.

‘To me it’s … only the moon.’

‘No, I mean, how d’you become a monk?’

‘The usual way. Bit by a monk.’

She stared sideways. ‘Really?’

‘No. Not really.’

‘Ah! Ah-ha! Who’d have thought, when we first met at that inn, you’d turn out such a joker!’ And she thumped him playfully on the arm which it looked like he didn’t at all enjoy. She never could quite learn the lesson that punching people wasn’t always a good thing. She made a note to remember that, then right off forgot and thumped him again.

‘I took the vows,’ he said, rubbing his arm. ‘I chose to take them.’

‘Saw the light, did you?’

Brother Diaz kicked at the grassy sand. ‘Something like that.’

‘I’d like to see the light,’ said Vigga. ‘Folk keep trying to show it to me, but you can’t just choose to see it, can you? And I can’t help thinking, all the while I’m looking, that if you’ll wake up one day and see the light, who’s to say you won’t wake up the next day and see a different one?’

‘Well … a thing’s either true or not,’ said Brother Diaz, but with a kind of puzzled frown. ‘It doesn’t all depend on who you ask … does it?’

‘It does a bit. I mean, even the Saved in the West and the Saved in the East are in spasm, or whatever.’

‘Schism.’

‘Like I said. What is one, anyway?’

‘A great rupture and disagreement between the two arms of the Church! Over the tripartite nature of God, and the precise wording of the Creed, and whether one should take the circle or the wheel as the holy symbol, and whether priests should be women in the image of the Saviour, or men in the image of her Father and, of course, some particularly bitter arguments over the calculation of the date of Easter …’ He sounded like he was getting a bit confused himself and he was a monk. ‘There’s no point digging too far into the details—’

‘Lord be praised.’

‘—but the Pope excommunicated the Patriarch then the Patriarch excommunicated the Pope … or was it the other way around …’

‘Whichever. You’ve got two voices of God on earth shouting over each other right there.’ She held up two fingers then kept on counting ’em off. ‘Then you’ve got the Followers of the Five Lessons and the Doubters, too. Then there’s cults of this saint or that and your angel or mine, and all kinds o’ pagans and druids and shaman and spirit-worshippers and demon-worshippers before we even get to the elves and whatever dark and hungry many-faced fuckers they worship.’ She’d run out of fingers somewhere and was going back the other way, so she threw up her hands instead. ‘They’re all certain as can be they’ve got the truth, but they’ve each got a different truth, don’t they? Still, I’m a well-known fucking idiot, what do I know? If you’ve seen the light, I’m happy for you, the world’s a dark enough place without—’

‘I didn’t become a monk because I saw the light!’ snapped Brother Diaz, which was a timely refresher ’cause Vigga had fully forgot where this conversation began. ‘I made … a mistake.’

‘You became a monk by mistake? I would’ve asked what the sack was all about before—’

‘No! I made a mistake, so I had to become a monk.’

Vigga felt a faint tingling of interest. ‘Did you kill someone, Brother Diaz?’

‘No!’

‘I won’t judge. I myself have killed several people.’

‘I’ve seen you kill at least three dozen with my own eyes! I didn’t kill anyone!’

‘What did you steal? Was it candlesticks? Was it pie? Was it … hold on, I’ll get it—’

‘Are you just going to list everything there is?’

Vigga shrugged. ‘We’ve got time.’

Brother Diaz closed his eyes. ‘I didn’t steal anything.’

‘Was it bacon?’ The mention of pie had made her thoughts stray towards food.

‘No.’

‘Cheese?’ she asked, hopefully. ‘Peas?’

‘I got a girl pregnant!’ barked Brother Diaz. He gave a long sigh, and said, much more softly, ‘There you are. That’s the awful truth. Why hide it out here?’ He tipped his head back and bellowed it at the sky. ‘I got a girl pregnant!’ Whipped away instantly on the wind and gone. ‘The wrong girl,’ he added, gloomily. ‘The most wrong girl available.’

‘Brother Diaz,’ murmured Vigga, ‘are you hiding a lustful past?’

‘No.’ He looked straight back at her. ‘I’m telling you about it right to your face. I was reckless, in my youth, and I got the wrong girl pregnant. My mother said a monk’s vows were the only way out. For my redemption. For my protection. To spare my family from embarrassment.’

‘Huh.’ Vigga still had some water squelching deep in one of her ears and she stuck her finger in and waggled it about. ‘I’m a bit disappointed.’

‘Who’d have thought,’ grunted Brother Diaz, ‘when we first met at that inn, you and my mother would have so much in common.’

‘Not by you, by your crimes.’ Vigga tried tipping her head one way, then the other, but the water wasn’t shifting. ‘I mean, being what I am, I’ve heard of … and seen … and, you know, done … some really diabolical outrages.’ Vigga gave up waggling and thumped her ear with the heel of her hand. ‘Fucking the wrong girl? I wouldn’t put it on the list of the most shameful secrets I’ve heard. I wouldn’t even put it near the list. Ah!’ The bubble burst in her ear and that delicious trickle of warm water came tickling out. ‘Hah! I got it! What were we talking about?’

‘The wrong girl,’ murmured Brother Diaz.

‘Right, yes. You’ve got to shrug it off. Toss it away.’ And Vigga wiped out her ear and flicked away the water.

‘Like nutshells?’ he grunted.

‘Exactly!’ And she thumped him again. ‘When you’ve eaten the nuts, you don’t keep the shells, do you? Till you’re dragging sacks of the bastards up every hill? Till you’re sleeping in a great heap of the fuckers?’

The details of the story were already fading. As far as Vigga was concerned, there was just one important lesson to take away from it.

Brother Diaz’s cock worked.

‘Ah! Look!’ she said, pointing to some rubbish scattered on the beach. ‘Must’ve floated from the wrecks.’

‘The others might’ve floated here, too!’ Brother Diaz hurried towards it. A big chest sat on the sand, ringed by scattered footprints, lock broken and lid pushed back. ‘Clothes,’ he said, peering in.

Vigga dragged a jacket up, bright cloth all covered in glinting thread. ‘The clothes of a fancy bastard.’ She sniffed it, and she sniffed around the chest, and she bent down to sniff the footprints, too. ‘Alex was here.’

‘You know her smell?’

‘I know everyone’s smell.’

‘Everyone has a smell?’

‘Oh yes.’

Brother Diaz glanced down at himself. ‘Do I?’

‘ Oh yes. Sunny was here, too.’

‘What does Sunny smell of?’

‘You know, sort of salty. That salty elf smell. They weren’t alone, either.’ She dropped to her hands and knees to get her nose to the ground and her tongue out so she could really taste it. ‘Men … several men … several badly washed men.’

‘What were they after?’ asked Brother Diaz. ‘Were they chasing Princess Alexia?’

‘I’m a werewolf,’ said Vigga, frowning up at him, ‘not a clairvoyant.’

‘No. Right. Sorry.’

‘We did have a clairvoyant, once, but not for long. The thing I learned is … it’s usually better not to know. They went this way.’ She loped on a few paces, still bent over, then sat on her haunches to sift at the wind. ‘Maybe being careful. Maybe being chased.’ She crept up a dune and snuffled at the scratty grass where the scent was stronger. ‘They waited here … then headed that way.’ She nodded towards the trees, then froze, narrowing her eyes.

‘What is it?’

‘Something else.’ She crawled sniffling around the hollow, pushing away salty sea and salty elf and scared princess and the distracting scent of Brother Diaz, and—

Her lips curled back. Her nostrils flared. She felt the wolf awake, prowling within the cage of her ribs, scratching to be released, and its growl came from deep in her throat – a long, low, warning throb.

‘What do you smell?’ whispered Brother Diaz, looking slightly scared.

Vigga glared up at him and snarled the word, turned to a slurred gurgle by the angry spit rushing into her mouth. ‘Werewolf.’